I’m a Junior in high school. The first week of school, our English teacher assigns us an essay. All she said was, “Long enough to get your point across,” which I thought I did. In the next two weeks, two more essays were assigned. I wrote them and turned them in, but found it strange that she would assign so many essays without telling us what she was looking for (e.g. lots of quotes, grammar, what we think about it. . .).
Come to find out (she FORGOT to tell us) that she does not give essays back in class. You have to go see her on your freetime, then she’ll grade your essay in front of you. So, I go in to see her. (She already has 3 of my essays.) I walk in, she pulls out 2 of my 3 essays and SKIMS them. Doesn’t even read them, SKIMS them. She tells me I don’t have the time period of when the book was written, what was going on during that time period, and how that affected the author’s writing in the first paragraph. I’m thinking, “Well, ex-cuuse me. I didn’t know I was supposed to do a history research paper to write my introduction paragraph”. I get a “B” and a “C-” on my first two papers. Now, I’ve been writing in the style for the past two yrs. in high school and no one’s ever told me I had to say how the time period affected the author. It seemed really WRONG that she would make us write 3 papers and THEN tell us what she wanted. But what really got me, what REALLY, REALLY made me furious was that she didn’t even READ the paper! She didn’t care what I had to say, or what I thought. Now I can see maybe freshman year papers focusing on what should and should not be included in an essay, but I expected that by Junior year they would care more about the thought process. After all, isn’t English & Literature suppossed to be the class where you learn to think for yourself instead of just regurgitating facts? Anyway, sorry this is so long. Let me know what you think.
White Wolf
“Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.”
“Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.”
